


Sweetest Downfall

by Jo (mindsofiron)



Category: Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Clintasha - Freeform, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Natasha realises her feelings and confesses them first, Partners to Lovers, Pepperony - Freeform, Wedding!Fic, clint x natasha - Freeform, fluffy fluff fluff, i might write porn as a second installment idek tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-06
Updated: 2014-02-06
Packaged: 2018-01-11 09:05:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1171235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mindsofiron/pseuds/Jo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha and Clint and a wedding and feelings, as requested a long time ago by Nel and finally sorta finished. Happy birthday, love!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sweetest Downfall

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lesliesbknope](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesliesbknope/gifts).



 

The one stark difference, Natasha muses - and chuckles inwardly to herself as she does - is that she’s here in this building today by invite and not covert operation. That, and she’s here today as Natasha Romanoff, friend to Pepper and Tony, and not Natalie Rushman From Legal. Same thing, really. She almost follows the train of thought that pertains to how she’s gone from killing machine to slightly human, when she finds the cause of that change standing in a corner of the reception room by himself, watching everyone with a slightly wary look that would look bored to the common human.

 

Speaking of said effector of such change, he’s changed a lot within her that she’s been ignoring for the past few years even while she gives in to the warmth that floods her system when he holds her and the way she softens at the thought of him. It’s an impulse foreign and a little confusing to her, until she realises what it is and then tries to actively avoid it.

 

Crossing the room, Natasha goes to stand by him, nearly as tall as him in her stilettos. He raises an eyebrow at her and she reciprocates in kind as he skates his gaze over her body in the dress she’s wearing.

 

“How’d you know my favourite colour?” He nods at the light purple crochet. She rolls her eyes and he chuckles, sipping what looks like Scotch from the glass he holds in his sturdy fingers. Natasha surmises that it’s been too long since they last had contact like this - solo missions and all.

 

It’s not like they haven’t fucked before. In fact, that’s pretty much all they’ve done that comes anywhere close to being more than friends. He’s her partner and best friend, and she’s the same to him, she’s sure (logical assumption to make, given everything), so there’s no reason to go and ruin all of that by thinking that there’s more between them.

 

Only there is, and she thinks she knows that for sure, but she’s not thinking about that now, and especially not thinking about the way he looks at her when they -

 

“Natasha!”

 

Right, not thinking about it.

 

Pepper weaves over with Tony on her arm looking happy and anxious and annoyed all at once, in the way only Tony can. Some days, Natasha thinks he’d make a great spy if he weren’t so fucking obnoxious. She greets them both with a warm hug and sincere congratulations.

 

“About time,” her wry smile is laced with a small bit of humour and genuine joy that she knows Tony and Pepper can spot, if no one else does. Clint nudges her side with an elbow and slips an arm around her waist as he congratulates the couple, and she wants to kill him for taking such liberties. Further examination of her feelings tells her that the thing that feels warm and fuzzy inside her chest isn’t (hasn’t been) going away for awhile, though, so she lets it slide and even leans into him a little. If Clint’s arm tightens around her, she pretends not to notice. It’s too dangerous to go there at the moment.

 

Tony clicks his tongue and winks at the movement, and Pepper’s eyeroll and elbow nudge doesn’t go unnoticed by either assassin, but they laugh out of genuine amusement instead of trying to deny anything.

 

With every meeting they’ve had over the past few weeks, they’ve grown closer and more publicly intimate with each other. Natasha’s chest suddenly feels tighter, the way it always does when she reads things that touch her, when she wants to talk and sort things out and give names to whatever’s inside her ribcage. This is something she’s only known after Clint, and she can’t help being a little jittery about it.

 

Under the pretense of kissing her temple tenderly, Clint murmurs, “See anyone dangerous?” into her ear. She shakes her head, appreciating the discretion and his vigilance. She shakes her head and is about to tug him out to the gardens to talk when Bruce stands to give his endearing speech. It’s not one bit stilted or awkward, and how strange, but Natasha finds herself proud and honoured to have seen a friend grow.

 

She might be a little amused at how this Avengers business has helped her grow into humanity if she isn’t starting to panic a little more than she can keep a hold on. Outwardly, of course, she’s all poise and elegance.

 

After the speech comes the dance, and Clint curtseys goofily in front of her with his hand held out in an elaborate, slightly mocking gesture. She grants him her hand, and an eyeroll. Wrapped up in each other this way, it’s easy to ignore whatever fluttering starts up in her tummy because he’s safe and warm and he’s protecting her. Natasha has never been one for protection and to play the submissive (well, maybe in bed) but something about being held this way by her partner makes her go soft and happy inside even as she wants to kick his ass for babying her.

 

It’s also easy to ignore her feelings because, well, in a convoluted sort of way, they’re right there. Easy to deal with feelings when everything is out in the open but no one is making is solid and concrete. Easy to deal with feelings when a temporary reprieve is granted, so you understand that after everything, you can shut them down again.

 

Clint’s lips hover over her temple and ear the entire time, and she’s too satisfied to really try to move, so she just keeps a wary eye on the crowd from where her head is perched on his shoulder. It should be good enough. Anyway, the firm press of his chest against hers and his arms around her waist - these things are all highly distracting and very good sensations, and she might need a good fuck later on.

 

Clint chooses this moment to speak at her, and she has to struggle a little not to let his words go right over her head when his voice curls into her ear like it was born to be there.

 

“Everything alright there, sweetheart?”

 

“Not your sweetheart,” she murmurs, speaking her words softly but with a hint of threat. He chuckles against her ear.

 

“Alright,” he accedes, “Everything okay, Tasha?”

 

She hums tunelessly against his shoulder. It takes another five to ten minutes of intense debate with herself before she turns so she can say into his ear, “Can we go out to the garden for a second? I need to talk to you,”

 

Scotch burning in her tummy, she tugs him out and they navigate through the thick crowd, hands clasped together. Her emotions have become a landslide in her: once she started to really think about how she wants this, how much she wants it and what they can be, she finds that she can’t stop. Even his fingers between hers spike an acute ache in her stomach at the thought that this might never mean what she wants it to. The Black Widow is never wrong, but she is Natasha Romanoff, and Natasha Romanoff makes human mistakes, and what if she’s been wrong all this time - what if Clint has never felt anything at all? He is a particularly affectionate person, and it’s not like -

 

“Oi, love hawks, chop chop!” Tony clicks his tongue and beckons them over with two fingers, and for how caught up she was in her little mental monologue, strangling Tony with her thighs sure is a good thought to entertain. “Don’t want to miss the bouquet now, better catch it so you can start planning the wedding. Hey, can I help? Wouldn’t want to miss it for the world. Do I have your permission to make the wedding favours mini mes that can walk and talk?”

 

Tony’s rapid fire, stream-of-consciousness talking habit is not easily lost on Natasha; the man talks to fill space and to process thoughts in his head, this she knows. She rolls her eyes and shoots Pepper a grateful smile when the lady leans over to remind her new husband that Clint and Natasha are not together, they’re just best friends and partners. Tony promptly snorts and rolls his eyes, but leaves to start up the car engine.

 

Natasha shuffles politely to the side as the bridesmaids and other ladies crowd noisily in the centre of the yard, jostling for the bouquet. Idly, she wonders why they’re so fond of an old tradition that means nothing, and - if it means something to them - why it has any significance at all. She blanks out in her head for a moment when there is a collective gasp and Clint’s low chuckle beside her.

 

The gorgeous bouquet of white lilies is lying at her feet, hardly tarnished, and when she looks up, the look on Pepper’s face is as much astonished and apologetic as Tony’s is devilish and entirely too pleased with himself. Natasha wagers he had something to do with where the little thing landed.

 

She stoops to pick it up, brushing a little dirt off some petals and offering it to the nearest young girl, who grins happily and says thank you for the flowers. Natasha smiles, but it suddenly feels stiff, and she tugs Clint out to where his car is and takes a deep breath.

 

“So, you taking me to your favourite diner or what?”

 

He looks surprised, but he never refuses food, so with that disarmingly charming grin of his and a short laugh, he nudges her into the front seat of his car and gets in, driving them fifteen minutes to their destination.

 

-

 

Twenty minutes later, she still hasn’t spoken a word. Her pancakes are almost finished, and the bacon is slowly making its greasy way into her stomach (she loves bacon, and, best for last is Natasha Romanoff’s Food Philosophy).

 

“Hey,” Clint teases, “You gonna talk, or am I gonna have to give you some of Coulson’s truth serum?”

 

She gives him a small smile back, but it does nothing for the nerves that are going off like malfunctioning tasers in her. It’s all she can do to keep from shaking.

 

He reaches over and covers her hand with his, and she sucks in a sharp breath that he pretends not to notice, for both their benefits.

 

“You okay?”

 

Nodding jerkily and biting the inner corner of her lip, Natasha thinks that maybe he makes her braver because even though she’s more scared than she can remember being in a long, long while, she also feels like she’s ready.

 

“Can we go back to your place? I kinda...I need to talk to you about something.”

 

-

 

He holds her hand the entire drive back, and she lets him because it feels good and because - if he doesn’t...reciprocate - it’s a little taste of how things could be if she were a very, very lucky girl. But Natasha Romanoff has never been lucky, so she doesn’t allow herself to hope.

 

When they get into his apartment, she shuts the door behind her gently and leans against it. He’s a few feet away, watching her with an amused spark in his eyes that covers the worry creasing in his crow’s feet. She firms her lips and looks at him, lifting her chin as though she is defiant because she hopes that will give her some bravado, even if false.

 

“I think I’m in love with you,”

 

It has taken the energy of a few months and the force of hurricanes burrowing under her skin to say these words aloud. It has taken her heart unravelling in a tornado to voice them because now that they’re here, falling flat in the space between her and Clint, they feel real but they also feel inadequate, like she has somehow not been enough. She begins to frown involuntarily but Clint just gives a small, resigned chuckle. She’s only beginning to process what that means when he turns away from her and the movement hurts like a stab. She stops thinking.

 

“I said - “

 

“I know what you said, Nat,” his voice is tight in the way it only is when he thinks she is lying to him, “I know what you said but I - “

 

“You don’t believe me,” she supplies easily, as though the air is not being sucked out of the room with every word, “I just - pretend you believe me. Pretend you do. What would you say then?”

 

He’s silent for a moment and she waits by the door. He’s always been good at keeping his distance and waiting her out like the sniper he is, so she thinks maybe she can do the same for him too. She hopes that it will work; that he will recognise it for what it is, a deal for a deal, a partnership rendered in actions and not words.

 

He’s quiet when he finally answers, “I’d tell you that I’ve always known that I’m in love with you.”

 

She wets her lips and feels a rush of something in her chest she can’t identify when he speaks the words. She has studied biology and the human bodily functions and she has never known of a sensation so foreign but she thinks if it is the plague, she will welcome it with wide open arms and unpainted doors so that the angel of death can come in and kiss her. He is her angel of death.

 

“Why don’t you believe me?” She asks, instead of saying everything she feels.

 

His laugh is short and cutting but if this floor were broken glass, still she would cross its width to him to feel his skin sure under hers, to know his steady breathing and never dream afraid. He cannot cut her when she has gone to pieces for him.

 

“It’s true,” she declares, in the firmest, quietest, simplest voice she can muster. She tries to speak sincerity. She tries to sing its overtones.

 

“Don’t lie to me, Nat,” he says. He is breaking, too. He has long broken himself apart for her and she has stubbornly been blind to it until now, and now she sings hallelujah to angels she’s never believed in, not even when she was a child and the Room did not kill her.

 

“I’m not.” She returns in that same, small voice, “You know this.”

 

His breath leaves him in a rush and she treads her path over, slipping around him and holding him close to her until he’s holding her back and his words are a rush of thankfulness and relief in her hair.

 

“What now?” She asks in her typical, point-blank fashion when he relents a little, just enough to stroke her hair and kiss her forehead fiercely.

 

He laughs again but this time it is short and joyful and so full of that unidentifiable ache that Natasha starts to chuckle alongside it.

 

He turns serious.

 

“Do you - you wanna - you know?”

 

“I don’t,” she says, half in jest as the corners of her lips start to turn up almost involuntarily. She feels like she’s swallowed sunshine when he smiles at her.

 

“Do you wanna be - uh, like - in a relationship?”

 

“I’ll consider it,” she tries to sound nonchalant but really, her voice just sounds kinda overly excited to her and he bends down to kiss her, and suddenly there’s a rush of warmth in her belly and she wants to be so close that there’s no air between them. He seems to feel the same, or maybe she’s just telegraphed her emotions, because he drags her closer to him even as his mouth demands more from hers. His kisses are like fire and velvet and he holds her like this is all he’s ever dreamed of and like he’s spent his days thinking of the best ways to make her knees go weak. He’s succeeding.

 

She has never thought how this would go, so she pulls away, breathless, and grins up at him until he grins back and touches their noses together. She thinks he’s a little like a puppy. It’s endearing.

 

“Hey,” she says, nuzzling his neck.

 

“Hi,” he answers, “So this is it, we broke the fraternisation rules.”

 

“Pretty sure we broke them first time we fucked, Barton,” she deadpans and rolls her eyes at him, but then he makes a happy noise and buries his face in her neck, and she decides that if this is how being in a relationship feels like when it’s verbalised and made real, then she doesn’t really mind at all.


End file.
